Friday 20 January 2012 07.16 EST
First published on Friday 20 January 2012 07.16 EST

The England coach, Andy Flower, has backed Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen despite their poor performances in the 10-wicket hammering by Pakistan in the first Test in Dubai.

Strauss got 25 runs over the two innings and his decision to bat first after winning the toss has been criticised by Pakistan's interim coach Mohsin Khan. "He's a pretty calm bloke, and I wouldn't say he's in poor form at all," Flower said of the captain. "He looks very composed and compact at the crease. He got out in the first innings to a shot he wouldn't want to repeat, and he was unlucky in the second innings – so that's how it goes sometimes. He will come back. As Strauss said yesterday, there's no point in panicking. What we've got to do is play better."

Pietersen, meanwhile, accumulated just two runs – his lowest score in two innings of a Test match – and his second-innings duck came after he tried to get off the mark with an attempted pick-up pull for six over the head of deep square-leg

"All batsmen are under pressure to make good decisions, and it's unfair to single out one batsman." Flower said. "In a number of instances in both innings, there were soft dismissals and poor decisions – and if you make poor decisions in Test cricket, you get severely punished for it.

"Our batsmen have a record of making a lot of very good decisions, and that's part of the reason why we've done so well recently. We've made some incredible first-innings scores to put us into position to put the opposition under pressure. On this occasion, we weren't good enough to do that."

England remain No1 in the International Cricket Council's Test rankings, having recovered impressively several times from what Strauss has recently termed "aberrations". And Flower has echoed his captain's straight talking, agreeing that there should not be any panic from England after one – albeit unexpected and emphatic – defeat.

Like the captain too, England's coach will not be getting in the batsmen's ears about their failings against Saeed Ajmal, who took 10 wickets with his off-spin.

"One of our principles is to continually improve – and we can certainly improve on this performance," he said. "We all know that it was the batting that let us down in this Test. But our batsmen have a pretty good record against spin, so I don't think it's a matter of reinventing the wheel.

"Of course, we will try to learn from it. But they all have their individual strengths, and they have to focus on those – and most of our batsmen will recognise that they underperformed for various reasons in this Test match."

The first Test was England's first in four months, and Flower conceded that a break of that length is inevitably a mixed blessing.

"It might be fair to say that the lay-off we've had probably means people aren't quite up to speed as we usually are. But we needed that break. The players needed a mental and physical break – and you can't have it all ways. Our challenge now is to get up to speed for the second Test."

There is no other option if England are to stay in with a chance of winning this short series, something Flower still believes they are capable of doing, starting in Abu Dhabi next week.

"One of the exciting things is that there are two Tests left, so we can still win the series," he said. "I'd much rather be 1-0 up standing here. But that's not the case – we're dealing in the real world and we're one down. It's going to take a lot of great cricket to ensure firstly that we get up level with them, and then see if we can win."